One Choice
by Taniera Highfire
Summary: The Galaxy envied, hated, looked with awe upon Revan and her freedom, her power, her ability to do nigh unto anything. But Revan, first standing in the shadow of the Star Forge, knows that there was only ever one choice. Female Revan, no alignment given


The cave was dark, and Revan had stopped walking. She wasn't quite sure why. Certainly not because she was afraid. There was nothing in the Galaxy she feared anymore.

Perhaps it was because Malak, beside her, was so eager to continue. His eyes were so bright. And those bright eyes of his were focused past her, into the darkness. So strong was the call from that darkness that he forgot her, that he passed her when she stopped. For a moment, Revan thought he would go on without her. But he paused, uncertain, and looked back.

And Revan felt the weight of the Galaxy settle more firmly on her shoulders.

There was power here. Great power. And it spoke of greater power still.

Thus the light in Malak's eyes, Malak, who'd sworn never to be weak again.

Power enough? Who knew? But it was the best bet.

And oh, it reeked of darkness, of destruction. Of the sort of corruption that could destroy men, destroy worlds. But what had she expected? One finds ancient power in darkness, not in light. Because power was an instrument of corruption; power bred darkness.

_I will never be weak again_, Malak had said. She should have seen it then.

But would it have changed anything?

No. Malak's fate had been forged the day he chose to follow her to war. He was bound to her, to follow where she led. And his own nature would lead him to whatever ends it would.

Had that even been a choice for him? Revan did not know. Entering the war against the Mandalorians certainly had not been a choice for her. Not a true choice. Everything would have fallen. The Republic, the Jedi, worlds and worlds and... no, not a choice. There is no such thing as choosing not to act. That is no choice at all.

"What is it, Revan?" Malak's voice was still smooth, still warm, still persuasive. Revan savored it, knowing it would not remain so.

One last time, she considered explaining to Malak her true purpose. The temptation was overwhelming, to let go of just a piece of her burden. To explain to him the darkness and the echoes in the Force. To beg him not to fall, and instead to stand beside her as she prepared whatever shield she could muster... One last time she allowed herself to caress the sweet thought of another with her vision, by her side, steadying her.

And then with a bitter and horrifying finality, she wiped that warmth from her heart.

Malak would always be weak, because he always looked elsewhere for strength. Even now, he turned to her.

"Nothing," Revan said, and once again she began to move forwards. Malak shadowed her steps.

Idly, she wondered if Malak had ever had any choice at all. She... Revan... she had had a choice. Only one. History would one day say that she chose to defy the council and join the war. That she chose to become a Dark Lord of the Sith and destroy that which she had just fought to save. And who knew what multitude of choices it would allow her. But history only records observations, not truth.

_She was a general's daughter._

_Not surprising, was it?_

_She learned at his knee the strategies, the cruelties of war. Battles, he told her, there were many who knew battle, who could even lead battle. But few, so precious few, that could lead wars. War required sacrifices the good could not bear. And patience evil could not muster. War required cunning of the wise, and speed of the foolish. In war, you were only allowed as many mistakes as your opponent. And in a defensive war, you could bet that your opponent was patient, cunning, swift, and cold. How else could they wage a war?_

_Was he startled, when she pointed to a feint on his map that would doom a battalion but wipe out a legion? She could no longer remember. It was so long ago. But perhaps even then, he could see some shard of her destiny. Perhaps he was the first to fear her, his seven year old daughter who would one day bend the Galaxy to her will._

_They lived near enough to the core systems that Jedi visited regularly. And they visited to seal the peace agreement as neutral arbiters. And they saw her. _

_Jedi, they whispered to her. You could be a great Jedi._

_"Listen to me, my little Revan," her father had pleaded, grasping tiny shoulders in his scarred hands. "There are precious few choices in this galaxy, precious few free choices, and here is one. Walk with these Jedi, and you will become a Jedi, and you will have enlarged your destiny. I may be a general, but I am a man first. And as a man, I can influence those few around me, and as a general, that influence spreads. But become a Jedi, and you are a woman no longer. Whatever you may become, you will be a Jedi first. Your life will never be simple again."_

_And she, stubborn little girl, out of respect for her father, glanced down the other path he tried to show her. The one where she stayed a regular mortal. That dim, dusty little way which was certain and straight and unbending, and she scoffed._

_"I don't want a simple life." _

_The Jedi were beautiful. Their weapons marvelous. Their power staggering. Their path golden and brilliant and full of wonder. Who, when offered, would ever choose to not join them?_

One choice.

And the Jedi always offer it to a child. Truly, training begins too early. Though Revan, Revan would have had to make the same choice, even knowing what she knew now. It would not be a choice if she made it now. But it had been then. And she had dismissed it.

Padawan to Jedi, she'd risen swiftly. There was no part of herself she could not control. And when she'd seen that soft-spoken boy, seeking a master...

_"Master Kae, a moment of your time," asked Revan, standing at her teacher's door._

_"What is it, Revan, who is no longer my apprentice?" Master Kae was bent over old artifacts. Holocrons, Holodisks. Some things so old they were written, not recorded. Other Jedi complained about how little attention Master Kae paid them. How she was only ever half listening, her attention always on her work as historian._

_But to Revan, she always gave her undivided attention. A Master knows her apprentice better than a father knew his daughter. And if the father felt some uneasy fear when she was but a child..._

_"I wish to take on a padawan of my own. He has completed every test to satisfaction, but no other master has stepped forward to accept him."_

_"Then take your apprentice. Why do you come to me?"_

_"I am young, yet, to guide another. I wished to know if you believed me ready."_

_And Master Kae laughed, though there was no joy in the sound. "No, Revan, who is no longer by apprentice, whatever I believed, you would have taken him on. What you want is for me to face the Council, to defend your age, because they can force me to do nothing. What you do not yet realize is that they have no power over you either. But no matter, it neither strengthens nor weakens either of us for me to speak in your stead. Go ahead, have an apprentice. But know that no Jedi in this academy is worthy of you as a mentor. This boy will never understand the hand that guides his way."_

Even now, Revan puzzled as to how much Master Kae had known. Master Kae could see things, could understand things...

Had that been another choice? To take Malak as a padawan? Revan smiled bitterly. No. She would have taken a padawan, whoever it was didn't matter to her. Chance led her sight to Malak. There was no choosing involved.

And suddenly, another thought occurred to Revan. Master Kae had not said that no padawan, no trainee was worthy of Revan. She'd said that no _Jedi_ was worthy. That included all the Masters. That included... Master Kae? Unless Master Kae, even then, had ceased to consider herself a Jedi. Revan could still sense Master Kae, far away in the deep darkness, Jedi no longer. All she could think then was that Master Kae had better not get in her way.

_But back then Revan was constantly with Malak. She listened night and day as he paced their quarters, trying not to let his worry show. Muttering about peace and patience and that the Jedi knew best. That had caused her to ask him why he was so disturbed. And he'd answered that his home world was in the sector the Mandalorians were attacking. And the Republic was clearly losing. And beneath his words, she heard the accusation that the Jedi were doing nothing. _

_Suddenly, her ears were opened. Her eyes could see. People, seething about the Jedi to whom she'd paid no heed before. Jedi themselves, who were all but questioning the Council, desperate to help the people crying out for them. Praying for an end to the screams that echoed in the Force. _

_She watched what the Republic was doing, and she knew two things. First, troop morale was horrifyingly low. Battles where they outnumbered the Mandalorians and held high ground were being lost. And second, the leader of the Republic troops as wise and good. Which meant, to her, slow and soft-hearted. _

_They would lose. They could double their army size, and they would still lose._

_Because the Jedi were bright, and beautiful, and powerful, and the Jedi had abandoned them._

_The Council, preaching caution in their shielded chamber..._

_Fools, all of them. The Jedi without the guts to act. If just one Jedi stepped up, the tide would be broken. If just one..._

_The night was dark, and she floated above the room of a thousand fountains. If there was a flaw in her reasoning, she would find it this night, or not at all._

_The air shifted._

_"At last, you have chosen."_

_Revan did not open her eyes. "No, not yet. But tonight, I will choose."_

_"No, you are thinking. And there is only one conclusion."_

_One does not choose to think. One simply does. And there was only one conclusion. Once again, Revan found herself without a choice._

_For hours, the two waited in silence, Master and apprentice._

_"Will you follow me to war?"_

_"No, Revan, I follow no one, not even you." _

Down the years, those words would echo. For she did join the war, and Revan welcomed her. But the echo remained, when, years later, Revan would finally seek out Darth Traya. Would leave the encounter Darth Revan. When Darth Revan, betrayed, would awake to see her carefully laid plans so totally destroyed. When Revan, the first path closed to her, would turn to walk the harder path, leaving all she loved behind... Darth Traya would watch. Darth Traya would remember her words that day. Darth Traya would so choose to stay behind, to guide another who would follow Revan—Revan, no longer her apprentice—follow Revan to dark places where she herself dared not go.

But that was another's choice and far away in both time and space. Revan never had much talent for feeling the tremors of the future. There was always too much in the present that demanded her attention.

_The next day, Revan arose from her meditation to don her battle robes. She walked the halls of the Academy, Malak shadowing her steps. Where she turn her gaze, Jedi put down their tasks and followed her. Then, at the door to their ships, the Council waited._

_"We will not allow you to go further."_

_"We know you are heading to war."_

_"We cannot allow this."_

_"We must exercise caution."_

_"We..."_

_Revan scanned the scant dozen before her. And there was only one face she regretted seeing._

_"Bastilla," she said, ignoring the Council, "join us. You Battle Meditation will smooth the course of the war. It may as yet not be fully trained, but even now you could save countless lives. You could help us bring about a swifter peace."_

_Bastilla, so full of pride. Bastilla, so certain of her path, the correct path, the path where she followed the rules and did the right thing. Bastilla, who through her words, turned some few Jedi from Revan's train. But they were weak, and Revan ignored them. And from so few that came to her, Bastilla dared glare at Revan in triumph._

_And Revan, seeing that pride, spoke to Bastilla again. "I did not say that your Battle Meditation would change the outcome of this war. Only its timecourse. Know that you and your power and your pretty ways have not influenced the life that beats at the heart of the Galaxy. You have only doomed a half-dozen worlds to fiery death. You could have been part of history. Now you are but a footnote, and ever will be. We are not given many choices in our lives. Have you chosen correctly?"_

_Bastilla did not back down. Revan had not expected her to. She had a strength in her. But there was now nothing left in the Academy for Revan._

_Revan walked straight through the Masters. And true to Master Kae's words, they could do nothing against her. She was a presence greater than they. Before her, they parted like water. And after her, they stared, at a loss as to what had occurred._

_Then, for a bit, the histories would get somethings right. Revan brought her Jedi to the Republic army amongst much jubilation. She allowed them to be deployed and watched morale soar. And she watched the commander of the Republic make hopeless blunders. _

_She asked him once to step aside and allow her to command. He refused. She commanded her Jedi. They obeyed. For one battle, there was chaos, some Republic troops obeying him, some her. Where he would have had all the troops retreating, hers, with a scant third of the army, won. And thereafter, all the troops followed her._

_But of course it was too late to save Malak's home world. That had fallen before she'd broken from the Jedi Council. News simply hadn't reached them yet. He'd knelt in the charred earth and sworn that next time, he'd be stronger, next time, he'd act sooner. Next time, he'd be able to protect what was precious to him._

_And while the breath of the oath still lingered on his lips, he looked up and asked her where they were going next. She could barely contain her disappointment. War had tested him. And his mettle was lacking. _

_The Mandalorians made no mistakes. War was their life. Revan... Revan made one. But as she rushed to correct it, she found that someone else had a contingency plan. Someone... crushed an entire world. And the hole it left in the Force was... staggering. Through that hole Revan stared, and was horrified. World after world she visited, looking for clues as to what she had seen. Every battle of the invasion she revisited. And the truth became clear._

The Galaxy had feared the Mandalorians.

The Mandalorians were _cannon fodder_.

They would need a greater strength than simply the Republic and surviving Jedi to stop the true invasion.

Bringing her mind back to the present, Revan stared down at an elegant mess of gears and runes.

The device before her was odd. Was old. Was powerful.

She touched it, and it reacted to her. It opened.

A map of the stars. A map to... what?

"It's incomplete, useless," muttered Malak, disappointed. Angry.

Her dear little padawan... such a fool.

She turned and walked away. And he followed without question. Twice a fool again.

By the second device, he understood that the map would be completed.

On the strange, uncharted world, she understood the darkness of the machine they sought. She saw the creatures that remained, heard how they had been twisted, how in turn, they twisted what they built.

A forge powered by a star. From this far away she sensed its power. It's darkness.

Malak sensed it too.

As they approached it, he asked her if she was sure they ought to continue. That there would be no turning back after this.

How could he be so blind?

There was no turning back now. There had been no turning back since that little girl had been seduced by the murmurs of the Jedi and the song of the Force. She'd enlarged her destiny. Had taken the entire galaxy under her wing. And she would find power enough to shield it, to protect it. Even if she had to assume a mantle of darkness. Even if she had to oppose the Republic. Even if she had to cripple the fleet she'd once commanded, she would do it. This was not the only hope, but it was the best one. A shield of darkness against a blade that was darker still. So that the light might live on.

She didn't answer him. He would follow her. And one day, in his lust for power, he would cease to follow. He would oppose her. And she would strike him down. But not this day. Not when he had not yet realized his fall, oh, her dear, dear... _apprentice_.


End file.
